A Critical Look at Mass Extinctions

Evolutionists believe in
5 mass extinctions. Is a
6th one occurring now?

 

 

by Jerry Bergman, PhD

One important element of evolutionism is the claim of mass extinction. A mass extinction is said to have taken place when a devastating, relatively rapid loss of at least 75 percent of the planet’s species occurs. They say mass extinctions are caused by cataclysmic events, such as asteroid impacts, resulting in millions of animals perishing. For instance, the extinction of the dinosaurs is thought to have taken place during a mass extinction event.[1]

Why Extinctions Are Important for Evolutionists

Mass extinctions are critical for evolution because they dramatically reduce competition by eliminating the dominant species, leaving behind large vacant ecological niches. According to evolutionary theory, this “allows” surviving lineages to diversify and fill these new niches.[2] Evolutionists claim this process, called adaptive radiation, can lead to significant evolutionary changes, including the emergence of new dominant animal groups.

The classic example they point to is the extinction of dinosaurs, which they attribute to the subsequent diversification of mammals.[3]  According to this view, mammals eventually became the dominant life forms on Earth, ushering in what is commonly referred to as the Age of Mammals. Evolutionary scientists generally propose that this transition was triggered by a cataclysmic event — the impact of an asteroid estimated to be 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) wide, creating a crater roughly 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) in diameter.

The claimed impact site, called the Chicxulub crater, is centered in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The asteroid strike is thought to have produced an intense heatwave and ejected vast amounts of debris into the atmosphere, resulting in the extinction of around 75 percent of Earth’s animal species, including the dinosaurs. The debris and atmospheric pollution from the impact are thought to have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, severely disrupting plant growth.

Chinks in the Chicxulub Story

This loss of vegetation would have devastated herbivores, and in turn, the carnivores that depended on them for food. Evolutionists speculate that these conditions somehow allowed mammals to thrive and eventually dominate. However, this explanation raises a problem: the same reduction in plant life should have also greatly affected mammals, many of which depended either directly on plants or on other plant-eating animals—just as the dinosaurs did.

Natural History Museum professor Paul Barrett made this admission about the mass extinction hypothesis of evolutionists: “There is a lot of discussion over the actual kill mechanism and how long that period lasted. There are still a lot of unknowns. But [he claims, nonetheless,] it was a massive event affecting all life on Earth, from microorganisms all the way through to dinosaurs.”[4]

A Growing List of Mass Extinctions

A total of five mass extinctions have been postulated by evolutionists,[5] most with less support than the dinosaur extinction event discussed above. Professor Hanna Ritchie (Ph.D. in Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh and currently a researcher at the Oxford Martin Program in Global Development) lists the five mass extinctions:

1. End of the Ordovician Period (444 mya = million years ago)
2. Late Devonian Period (360 mya)
3. End of the Permian Period (250 mya)
4. End of the Triassic Period (200 mya) – some assume this was the event that killed off the dinosaurs. However, the majority of evolutionists believe they were killed off at the end of the Cretaceous Period. This is only one of many disagreements.
5. End of the Cretaceous Period(65 mya) – the event that killed off the dinosaurs.[6]

A sixth mass extinction is said to be occurring now. In contrast to the previous five mass extinction events, since evolutionists claim this one is happening now in real time, they say it can be supported by scientific data. This current mass extinction was described by Stanford University professors Ceballos[7] and Ehrlich as follows:

We are in the sixth mass extinction event. Unlike the previous five, this one is caused by the overgrowth of a single species, Homo sapiens. Although the episode is often viewed as an unusually fast (in evolutionary time) loss of species, it is much more threatening because, beyond that loss, it is causing rapid mutilation of the tree of life, where entire branches (collections of species, genera, families, and so on) and the functions they perform are being lost. It is changing the trajectory of evolution globally and destroying the conditions that make human life possible.

They conclude that this event represents a significant threat to the survival of civilization and to the habitability of future environments for humankind, and thus requires urgent and decisive corrective action to mitigate the problem.[8]

What Does the Science Say?

In response to widespread claims that a sixth mass extinction is currently underway, Jake Buehler in Science News said on September 4, 2025 that recent extinctions have been relatively rare and largely confined to islands. In fact, he said, they are far fewer in number than often suggested.[9] Buehler refers to studies using empirical, quantifiable data that found that over the past 500 years, only 102 genera of higher taxa have gone extinct—90 animal genera and 12 plant genera—along with 10 families and two orders. While these extinctions are  certainly concerning and warrant ecological attention, they do not constitute a mass extinction, which would involve the loss of more than 75 percent of Earth’s biosphere.

Creationists argue that claims of multiple mass extinctions are “just-so” stories, constructed to explain the many challenges in the fossil record. From a creationist perspective, instead of multiple extinctions over millions of years, a single, global Flood accounts for the vast majority of fossils. The different layers of the geological column are interpreted not as evidence of distinct time periods, but as a sequence of burial events caused by the Flood’s transgressing and subsiding waters. Ironically, the “five mass extinctions” identified by evolutionists correspond closely with the five transgressive megasequences of the Flood: the Sauk, Tippecanoe, Kaskaskia, Absaroka, and Zuni Megasequences, as determined by creation geologists.

Summary

In contrast to the five past mass extinctions, many evolutionists claim that a sixth one is occurring today. This makes it possible to evaluate the evidence for the current event far more carefully than possible for the past five, which are based on incomplete data. If scientists had similarly detailed information about the previous mass-extinction claims, those conclusions would likely be significantly revised, if not entirely dismissed. From a creationist perspective, the only true mass extinction occurred during the global Flood described in Genesis.

References

[1] Buehler, Jake, “A sixth mass extinction? Not so fast, some scientists say.” Science News,  https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sixth-mass-extinction-scientists-debate, 4 September 2025.

[2] “The role of mass extinction in evolution,” University of California, Berkeley, UC Museum of Paleontology. Understanding Evolution, https://evolution.berkeley.edu/mass-extinction/the-role-of-mass-extinction-in-evolution/.

[3] Upham, N.S., J.A. Esselstyn, and W. Jetz, “Inferring the mammal tree: Species-level sets of phylogenies for questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation,” PLoS Biol 17(12):e3000494, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000494, 4 December 2019.

[4] Osterloff, Emily, “How an asteroid ended the age of the dinosaurs,” London Natural History Museum, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-an-asteroid-caused-extinction-of-dinosaurs.html, 2025.

[5] Ritchie, Hannah, “There have been five mass extinctions in Earth’s history,” Our World, https://ourworldindata.org/mass-extinctions, 2022.

[6] Ritchie, 2022.

[7] Ceballos is now at Departamento de Ecologia de la Biodiversidad, Instituto de Ecologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Tercer Circuito Exterior SN, C.U., 04510 Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico.

[8] Ceballos, G., and P.R. Ehrlich, “Mutilation of the tree of life via mass extinction of animal genera,” PNAS, 120(39):e2306987120, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2306987120, 18 September 1923.

[9] Buehler, 2025.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.